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Towerfall Ascension Review for PC & PS4

You stand poised, muscles tensed, quiver empty as you look into the face of your enemy while he prepares to shoot an arrow at you. Then, as the fateful arrow leaves its mark, you intercept the deadly projectile mid-air and shoot it back at your attacker, leaving him stunned at how the tables have turned. In the precious moments before your hijacked arrow reaches its mark, both you and your enemy contemplate how fickle Lady Luck really is. Welcome to Towerfall Ascension. Towerfall is a great addition to a new genre of games that reward quick reflexes, presence of mind and tactics over learning complex button combinations. Much in the vein of Nidhogg, Towerfall creates a lot of the aforementioned tense, dramatic moments in between matches that makes playing through each round incredibly satisfying. And then the next round begins, and you start the battle all over again.

Towerfall is similar to another game that came out recently, namely, Samurai Gunn in one specific way – both games give players the ability to kill each other in a single hit. In addition, both of them are essentially simple point-and-shoot games where victory depends on positioning and reflexes. While Samurai Gunn places its action up close and personal, Towerfall allows you to play the range game, picking off opponents from a distance with your bow. This is not to say that you won’t find fights happening at close to melee range in Towerfall. Sometimes, the best way to establish your dominance over your opponents means getting in their face and shooting an arrow through them at point blank range. Both situations will often occur during your matches in Towerfall, and mixing and matching them depending upon the layout of the arenas and your position in battle is key to victory.

Since Towerfall Ascension is an archery-combat game, it goes without saying that you’ll need to have arrows in your kitty. And the game doesn’t give you an unlimited arsenal to simply shoot and pray. You have a specific number of arrows, and if you spend them recklessly during a round, you will have to hope that you can intercept or pick up a few before you become easy prey. Each player starts with three arrows in a round, and after you’ve exhausted these, you can walk over the bodies of your foes to collect additional ones. You can also dash towards an arrow and pluck it out of midair ninja style and add it to your backpack. Campers beware, you will have to face your enemies head on from time to time.

Like many other games of its ilk, Towerfall truly shines in the multiplayer battles. You can spend a few hours in the single player campaign, which features trials and AI battles. The trials are aimed at familiarizing you with the different mechanics of the game, such as different arrow types and maneuvers. You can also team up with a friend to take on waves of AI baddies in the Quest mode. The enemies in Quest mode are suitably varied – you will face ghosts, slimy monsters and several grim reapers, trudging around with their scythes. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses, so if you get tired of shooting archers, you can try Quest mode to break up some of the monotony.

The Versus mode is the high point of Towerfall Ascension. You can compete with up to three other players in either 2 v 2 matchups or a free-for-all, every man (and bow) for himself royal rumble. The free-for-all matchups are incredibly exciting and require you to pay close attention to everything that is happening on your screen. You will have to simultaneously keep an eye on the actions of three other players who are trying to put an arrow in you (and each other). In team battles, the dynamic of the matches is completely different. You can use your partner as bait to draw out one of your opponents into your line of fire, or try to cover their path while they try to escape a compromising position. Both modes offer some fun tweaks to spice up the gameplay – one setting will kill you instantly if you try to fire when your quiver is empty, and another will cause corpses on the ground to explode. You can play around with these options to make things more interesting in multiplayer matches.

Whether you play with or without these modifications, Towerfall Ascension offers an absolute whale of a time when you are playing with your friends says Brandon Perton from The Old School Game Vault. Arrows move about as quickly as players do, and if you are alert, you can snatch a few out of the air and add them to your quiver. Sometimes, you need to rush your opponents and other times, you need to hang back and survive while you come up with a plan. When one of your tactics works, it’s a lot of fun and it keeps combat in Towerfall consistently satisfying.

While the single-player mode pales in comparison to the multiplayer, it still offers a decent break if you want to practice your skills before you head into the real world, or just shoot some grim reapers in the face. The real meat of Towerfall is in the Versus mode, where you can play with your friends if you have at least two of them available. Unfortunately, since there is no multiplayer currently available for this game, you might have to wait for your friends to finish work or catch them on a weekend before you can match wits and archery skills against each other. When you do have people to play with, Towerfall Ascension is a satisfying, enjoyable archery combat game that rewards tactics and reflexes.